


Only Pieces

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-16
Updated: 2008-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-29 15:29:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo's listened to the stories, done her homework, tried to prepare for everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Set a few weeks after "Born Under a Bad Sign." Thank you to the wonderful [](http://fryadvocate.livejournal.com/profile)[**fryadvocate**](http://fryadvocate.livejournal.com/) for beta reading. Written for the Women of Supernatural Gen Flashfic Challenge at [](http://spn-xx.livejournal.com/profile)[**spn_xx**](http://spn-xx.livejournal.com/) [prompt #1](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_xx/9826.html#cutid1).

The shovel felt light when Jo started; the digging was easy work after her last gig in a warehouse. Being a waitress paid better, because of the tips, but there'd been nothing available and she needed money. Money for gas, ammo, food, salt, old books; and she'd be damned if she'd use the credit card Mom had given her for college. When college hadn't worked out, Mom had never asked for it back and Jo kept it, because you just never knew and her daddy always said prepare for everything you can think of and some things you can't.

It would feel like defeat to use it. If a charge showed up on the bill, Mom would know for sure that the water was rising, getting close to Jo's chin.

It wasn't anywhere near her chin, only up to the middle of her chest, maybe.

She should've worn gloves. The night wasn't that cold, but a wind danced up from the river and across the cemetery, and the shovel handle started to chafe after twenty minutes of work. There were calluses on her palms and fingers, but not in the right places – those were from holding a shotgun, not from digging.

The earth was pliant, damp river soil. Through the trees at the cemetery's edge water glimmered, not as bright as the lights of the occasional car going over the bridge. This time of night, there wasn't much traffic to speak of, not in a backwater like this.

Even with the earth giving way for her, her arms started to ache. She stopped to rest, taking a few long gulps of water from the plastic sports bottle, tugging her ponytail tie a little tighter. The sonuvabitch was down there, a few more feet to go.

Hunters talked ( _well, some of them did,_ and she pushed the bitter, maybe unjust thought away), told her stories, explained how to do a salt and burn, when and why you had to use iron, filling in the gaps in her knowledge. A lot of the lore she had in her father's voice was shards, incomplete. Mom hadn't wanted him teaching her, never came out and forbade it, but her body language had always been a loud tell. So to make her mother's mind easier, Dad said, he told Jo stories only sometimes, when Mom was busy elsewhere.

 _She needs to know enough to keep her alive, not the rest of it._ Jo'd heard them arguing in the night. _But babe, what if she wants to? She's gotta be who she wants to be._

The soil was in a big pile behind her, grass, glass, dirt and stones all mixed together, the waning moon casting her shadow faint over the grave as the shovel's blade struck wood.

Jo hopped down and used the blade to wedge the wooden coffin open. She put the sleeve of her jean jacket across her nose and mouth, glad no one was there to see her recoil at the sight and smell of desiccated corpse.

She climbed out, sprinkled the rock salt, the accelerant, and then struck a match. She dropped it on the body, watching the flames curl up, the sparks like fireflies. Her salt and fire was probably the kindest blessing that body had ever received, in life or death. She'd done her homework, knew the things he'd done.

The wind picked up, tugging at the flames even down in the hollow of the grave. Jo crouched at the edge, shielding the fire with her body.

After it burned for a while, she slung the shovel over her shoulder and walked away, at ease with the grave stones.

* * *

The next day she went back to the prison museum and pretended to look at postcards in the gift shop while the tour guides told each other tales over coffee.

“It happened this morning. Steve said right before, he felt icy cold on the back of his neck.”

“Is he okay?”

“Could've been worse. Only broke his ankle. Could've been a lot worse. I swear if this keeps up I'm going to quit.”

“Tell me about it. After what happened to Joyce?” The girl shuddered, wrapping her fingers around the paper cup.

Jo didn't realize her hands had curled into fists until she felt her own fingernails digging into her skin, drawing blood.

 _Shit_ , what had she missed?

It was another hour yet to the first tour. She pushed open the door marked “no entry without tour guide” and wandered the prison's faded corridors.

What had she missed.

She located the correct door and stepped out into the narrow passage that ran beneath open sky. He'd died there forty years ago with another prisoner's knife in his gut, a kind of justice. Recent construction work to shore up a wall had disturbed the ground, and loosed his spirit.

What had she missed.

 _Prepare for everything you can think of and some things you can't._

A spirit didn't have to be tied to its bones, sometimes it attached to a...

There. She crouched in the dirt, her fingers digging into the soil beside the brick wall until the rest of the object emerged, a rusted circle of metal. As the story went, they'd been transferring him when the other prisoner attacked. He would have been wearing manacles, most likely; when they'd tended to him, someone might have unlocked them and cast them aside, then forgot in all the excitement. Maybe.

Or maybe it was just a circle of metal without significance.

Jo got to her feet, weighing it against her palm. It could be melted down or she could purify it, purge it of being the spirit's anchor. If that didn't work, she'd look again, and keep looking until she found it.

Or she could get into her battered little car and drive for a few hours until she found the right kind of place -- she'd know how to spot it. After all, she'd been raised in one.

She'd find them. There were always hunters out there willing to tell stories.

~end


End file.
